Robin Irvine

My doctoral research project focuses on the Partido de Resina estate in Andalusia, Spain, where they breed fighting bulls for bullfights and street festivals. It is a multispecies ethnography in that it pays particular attention to the ways bulls, horses and humans shape each other's worlds. I am drawing on 15 months of fieldwork during which I was apprenticed to the foreman of the estate. Working with the team at Partido de Resina – humans, horses, and dogs – I came to know intimately the bulls, cows and calves in their care. I am structuring my thesis round the life cycle of the pabloromero fighting bulls so my readers can appreciate the actual lives of these animals, beyond the myth and polemic. Beyond this, my aim is to situate this particular bull-breeding estate both in its local context in the marshlands outside Seville, which is seen as a seat of tradition both in terms of religion and in terms of animal husbandry, and also in the wider context of the world of the bulls in 21st century Europe.